Saint Joseph Catholic Church

New Ways Ministry, which dissents from Catholic teaching on homosexuality, said that “queer voices emerged loud and proud in both their worship and their calls for reform” during Katholikentag (Catholic Day), the biennial German Catholic gathering first held in 1848.

During the gathering, which took place in Würzburg from May 13 to 17, “more than 200 people attended a queer worship service,” according to New Ways Ministry. Held inside the Order of Saint Augustine’s church, the service was “prepared by the initiative #OutInChurch, the Augustinian Monastery in Würzburg, the Federation of German Catholic Youth (BDKJ), the Network of Catholic Lesbians, the Ecumenical Working Group on Homosexuality and the Church (HuK), and ‘Queer and Christian in the Diocese of Würzburg.’”

New Ways Ministry was the subject of a notification by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (1999) and a statement by the US bishops (2011). Pope Francis, however, praised Sister Jeannine Gramick, co-founder of New Ways Ministry, in a handwritten letter, and subsequently met with Sister Gramick and other leaders of the group.

A priest of the Diocese of Uyo, Nigeria, who ministered in the United States was convicted in a Texas courtroom of three counts of sexual assault of adult women.

Father Anthony Odiong, who was arrested in Florida in 2024 for child pornography, also “fathered at least one child with another woman in Louisiana who had been under his spiritual direction,” according to the prosecution’s DNA evidence.

The case “highlights the Catholic Church’s ongoing challenges in addressing clergy sexual predation of adults in situations where they are vulnerable, particularly in relationships of pastoral care or spiritual guidance, while states such as Texas and Georgia have passed laws to criminalize such acts,” noted Gina Christian of OSV News.

The Washington Nationals fired its community relations director, Sean Hudson, after the release of a video in which he stated that the baseball team does not use pitcher Trevor Williams on social media because he is a “super Christian-Catholic” who spoke out against “drag queens who sometimes dressed up as nuns.”

“We were horrified by the comments that were made on the video,” said team business president Jason Sinnarajah. “The comments don’t reflect us as an organization, our values and who we are. We took action right away, and that individual is no longer employed by the team.”

The sole bishop in Estonia, where only 0.8% of people are Catholic, discussed a small but unprecedented rise in conversions this year.

Bishop Philippe Jourdan received 48 adults into the Church at Easter; 33 of them were unbaptized.

“We had never had so many,” Bishop Jourdan told the National Catholic Register. “Previously, catechumens were often in the 30-to-40 age bracket. Now, they are much more often in their 20s.”

Paul III Nona, who was elected Patriarch of the Chaldean Catholic Church last month, was enthroned in Baghdad on May 29.

Syriac Press reported that the new Patriarch outlined six priorities, including unity in the Church, the spiritual life, and “authentic identity”: “preserving liturgical traditions, the Syriac-Aramaic language, customs, and Eastern Christian spiritual philosophy.”

The departing chairman of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom told EWTN News that the “situation for religious freedom in the world today is worse than it was when I came on the commission [in 2022], and certainly worse than it was a decade ago.”

Stephen Schneck lamented the worsening situation in India and China, the world’s two most populous nations.

Schneck said that India “is among the worst countries in the global community in regards to religious freedom from the analysis that has been done by the commission over the last decade or so.”

The plight of religious believers in China “gets worse and worse,” he added, and “itʼs not just limited to individuals. Weʼre talking about whole populations here—the Uyghur Muslims, the Tibetan Buddhists, Christians.”

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